Trump campaign CEO’s ex-wife says he made anti-Semitic remarks
LOS ANGELES — An ex-wife of Stephen Bannon, Donald Trump’s new campaign CEO, said Bannon made anti-Semitic remarks when the two battled over sending their daughters to private school nearly a decade ago, according to court papers.
That revelation came a day after reports emerged that domestic violence charges were fifiled 20 years ago against Bannon following an altercation with his then-wife, Mary Louise Piccard.
In a sworn court declaration following their divorce, Piccard said her ex-husband had objected to sending their twin daughters to an elite Los Angeles academy because he “didn’t want the girls going to school with Jews.”
“He said he doesn’t like Jews and that he doesn’t like the way they raise their kids to be ‘whiney brats,’” Piccard said in the 2007 court fifiling.
Bannon, the former head of Breitbart News, took the helm of Trump’s campaign last week in yet another leadership shake-up. The campaign has been plagued by negative stories about staffffffffffffers, including charges lodged against his former campaign manager following an altercation with a reporter, and questions about his former campaign chairman’s links with Russian interests.
Alexandra Preate, a spokeswoman for Bannon, denied that he made anti-Semitic remarks about the private school.
“He never said that,” Preate said, adding that Bannon was proud to send his daughters to the school.
Trump previously has been criticized for invoking anti-Semitic stereotypes, including tweeting out an anti-Hillary Clinton image that included a Star of David atop a pile of money.
Clinton has tried in recent days to highlight Trump’s popularity with white nationalist and supremacist groups. She delivered a speech Thursday that linked him with the “altright” movement, which is often associated with efffffffffffforts to preserve “white identity,” oppose multiculturalism and defend “Western values.”
Trump has pushed back, defending himself and his supporters, and labeling Clinton “a bigot” for supporting policies he argues have ravaged minority communities.
Trump has noted that his daughter, Ivanka, would soon be giving birth to a Jewish child. Ivanka Trump conver ted to Orthodox Judaism when she married Jared Kushner.
Piccard filed for divorce in January 1997, just over a year after she told police Bannon roughed her up on New Year’s Day 1996 following a spat over money, in which she spit on him.
Bannon was charged in 1996 with misdemeanor witness intimidation, domestic violence with traumatic injury and battery, according to a Santa Monica, Calif., police report. The charges were dropped after his estranged wife didn’t show up at trial, according to court records.
Piccard said in her declaration that she skipped the trial after Bannon and his lawyer arranged for her to leave town. She said Bannon had told her the lawyer would make her look like the guilty party if she testifified and the attorney told her she would wind up broke if Bannon went to jail.